—
SULLY WAS PERCHED on his usual stool at the end of Hattie’s lunch counter. He’d been there since six-thirty, as he was most mornings, helping Ruth through the breakfast rush, though today he’d been pretty much useless, his chest tight as a drum, his breathing shallow. Since then the place had emptied out. Come noon it would be busy again, but that was an hour away. On the counter next to Sully’s empty coffee mug was this week’s North Bath Weekly Journal, folded so that his former landlady’s photo smiled up at him knowingly. Legendary middle-school teacher Beryl Peoples, read the caption. To her many students, Miss Beryl. The “Miss” had hurt the old woman’s feelings, Sully knew. She might’ve been tiny and gnomelike, but she was also a married woman, whether or not her eighth graders could imagine her with a husband. Sully had mostly called her Mrs. Peoples, which she seemed to appreciate, and in return she’d called him Mr. Sullivan, which he didn’t know how to feel about. “Does it ever trouble you,” she once asked him, “that you haven’t done more with the life God gave you?” “Not often,” he replied at the time. “Now and then.” Something about her expression in this newspaper photo suggested that even today, nearly a decade after her death, she was still waiting for a more honest answer. Sorry, old girl, he thought.
He couldn’t help wondering what she’d think of the weekend’s festivities. She’d always taken a dim view of pomp and circumstance, and he suspected she’d be ambivalent at best about the middle school being renamed in her honor. Nobody’s fool, she would recognize the gesture as politically motivated, another of the new mayor’s dubious initiatives—“Unsung Heroes,” this one had been dubbed — calculated to instill pride in a community long accustomed to self-hatred. The idea was that each Memorial Day someone who’d made valuable contributions to the community would be celebrated. Apparently Miss Beryl had been a unanimous choice for this the inaugural award, which indicated to Sully — and he was confident his old landlady would agree — that the pickin’s were slim. Who would they tab next year?
It was entirely possible he’d never learn. Two years, the VA cardiologist had given him. Probably closer to one. He’d suspected something was wrong for a while. The shortness of breath, at first on steep stairs, then on any sort of incline, and lately whenever he tried to move even a little fast. Why had he waited so long, the doctors wanted to know. Because, well…admit it, he had no satisfactory answer. Because in the beginning the symptoms came and went? Because he’d be fine for weeks at a stretch, during which he could tell himself it was nothing? Sure, but deep down he’d known, and when the symptoms returned he wasn’t surprised. Even then he probably wouldn’t have gone in if Ruth hadn’t noticed him struggling and badgered him to get it checked out. After two minutes on the treadmill, they’d shut down the stress trial.
“So what’s the deal?” she’d asked the minute he got back.
“They think I should quit smoking,” he told her. Which was true, just not the whole truth and nothing but.
“Really?” she said. “Imagine that. Cigarettes aren’t good for you? Who knew?” She seemed satisfied with the explanation, though. Didn’t grill him like she usually did when she thought he was bullshitting her. Lately, though, he’d caught her staring at him quizzically, so maybe in the intervening two weeks she’d become suspicious.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth went more like this: A-Fib. Arrhythmia. A racing heart. Brought on by physical exertion. By stress. By nothing at all. Leading to: congestive heart failure. Solution: Open-heart surgery. Quadruple bypass. Not particularly recommended for men his age, whose condition was so far advanced and whose arteries were so obstructed from years of smoking. Any other possibility? A procedure to insert an internal defibrillator to tell the heart when to beat, when not to. Routine process, an hour tops. Small incision. A couple hours later you’re up walking around. The next day you go home. Cured? No. Most likely you’ll still die of congestive heart failure, just not so soon. The other possibility, given your age and physical condition, is that you die on the operating table. If you do nothing? Two years, but probably closer to one. “Your heart could fail at any time,” the cardiologist admitted. “You could die in your sleep.”
This scenario, Sully gathered, was supposed to scare him into the procedure, but it hadn’t. “Wake up dead?” he said. “That doesn’t sound so bad, actually.”
Nor had the cardiologist disagreed. But given his age and condition, there was also a distinct chance he could have a major stroke and not die. Spend the rest of his days unable to talk, feed himself or shit of his own volition. Though this could also happen if he didn’t have the surgery, the man had added.
“If you’re telling me what I should do,” Sully said, “I’m not hearing it.”
The doctor shrugged. “Most people want the defibrillator. Or their kids do. Or their wives. Are you married, Mr. Sullivan?”
No. An ex-wife, Vera, no longer in the picture. No longer even in her own picture, really. Poor woman, her grip on sanity had always been relaxed. A couple years ago she’d slipped into dementia and now resided in the county home. Her second husband, Ralph, already lived there, having suffered a catastrophic nervous breakdown years earlier, so it would have been a reunion of sorts had Vera recognized him, but she swore she’d never laid eyes on the man before and certainly wouldn’t have married anyone who looked like that. Afterward her decline had been swift. In a matter of months she no longer recognized Peter, her son, or Will, her grandson. Confident she wouldn’t recognize him either, Sully’d paid her a visit, but when she saw him her eyes immediately narrowed, and she began muttering profanities under her breath, looking right at him the whole time. According to the nurses, this was a whole new madness, one he shouldn’t take personally. “You probably just remind her of someone,” one nurse speculated, to which Sully replied, “Yeah, but the person I remind her of is me.”
So, no. No wife to please.
His son, then? His grandson? the cardiologist had inquired. Wouldn’t they want him to do the procedure?
“You’re going to tell them?”
“You’re not?”
Probably not. He hadn’t made up his mind completely, but no, he doubted he would. Definitely not Will. No reason to burden the boy, who was off to college in the fall. His son? No real reason to burden him either. If he told anyone it would be Ruth. He’d started to half-a-dozen times, then decided against it. Studying his landlady’s newspaper photo, he wondered if he’d have told her if she were still around.
“Question,” said a familiar voice at his elbow, making Sully just about jump out of his skin. Attired in his customary Ralph Lauren polo shirt — pink today — and light cotton slacks and cream-colored canvas shoes, Carl Roebuck looked, as always, like the owner of an automobile dealership who was late for his tee time. That Sully had been so deep in thought that a man like Carl could sneak up on him was unnerving, and he quickly scanned the room for other potential threats. Carl himself wasn’t dangerous, but whenever he entered the room you did well to check if his appearance had tipped over the edge some otherwise rational person — a woman he’d recently jilted, perhaps, or that woman’s husband, or somebody he owed money to, or maybe just somebody who’d gotten fed up with his never-ending bullshit. With this latter group Sully felt particular sympathy.
“On average,” Carl said, fixing Sully seriously, “how often would you say you think about sex?”
Ruth was on her way down the counter now, coffeepot in hand. “I’m curious how he’ll answer this myself,” she admitted, putting a mug in front of Carl. She and Sully had been lovers on and off for more than twenty years, but for the last decade just friends, an arrangement Ruth seemed to resent, even though it had been her idea. His mistake, as near as Sully could make out, was that he hadn’t put up enough of a fight at the time or expressed sufficient regret since. Though she was unlikely to scald him until he answered the question, Ruth, armed with a hot coffeepot, inspired caution, and he instinctively leaned back until she finished filling Carl’s cup and set the pot down on the counter. Only then did he give the other man his complete attention. “He’s not here,” Sully said.